Telephone systems, such as Touch-Tone system or dial systems, are well-known and extend throughout the United States. Such systems have been used for normal telephone conversations and as Data Sets but have not, to applicant's knowledge, achieved their full utilization as a communications interface, such as achieved by the present invention and the invention described and claimed in my U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 97,687, filed Nov. 27, 1979 and entitled "Verbally Interactive Telephone Interrogation System" With Selectible Variable Decision Free, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,320,256, and Ser. No. 295,817, filed Aug. 24, 1981 and entitled "Interactive Telephone Answering System", now U.S. Pat. No. 4,420,656, in which the Touch-Tone type telephone is utilized to transmit unique signals over a captured telephone line to provide a verbally interactive telephone interrogation system, or to provide an interactive telephone answering system capable of caller selectable routing of an incoming call to a desired receiving telephone in accordance with a verbally interractive prerecorded decision tree format as in the aforementioned copending patent applications. Moreover, such telephone answering systems have previously employed telephone answering machines, such as in the home which are of severally limited capability and do not, to applicant's knowledge, readily and efficiently, allow the user to provide multiple information messages which can be remotely selected by a specified caller having knowledge of a selection code, or which readily allow a user to provide for selective call screening or directing via the telephone answering machine or apparatus to easily provide these sophisticated features for a simple home multiple telephone extension system merely through use of the telephone answering apparatus of the present invention. This is so despite the widespread knowledge of prior art interrogation systems, or multiple choice selectible response systems, such as examplified by the prior art cited in the aforementioned copending patent applications; namely U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,194,089; 3,947,972; 4,078,316; 3,950,618; 4,153,370; 3,651,471; 4,008,369; 4,216,497; 4,107,735; 3,906,450; 2,674,512; 3,744,712; 3,744,712; 3,776,453; 4,023,729; 3,974,335; 3,584,142; 3,654,708; 3,668,312; 3,729,581; 2,777,901; 3,194,895; 3,245,157; 3,273,260; 3,255,536; 3,284,923; 3,477,144; 3,484,950; 3,538,621; 3,5646,791; 3,623,238; 3,665,615; 3,708,891; 3,763,577 and 3,774,316. The aforementioned systems also include broadcast audience poll systems such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,674,512; 3,744,712; 3,776,453; 3,974,335; 4,023,729 and 3,950,618. Moreover, automatic telephone answering systems employing multitrack prerecorded messages in a fixed format are known, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,089, however such prior art systems are not truly interactive telephone answering systems capable of enabling caller selectable routing of an incoming call to a desired receiving telephone in accordance with a verbally interactive prerecorded decision tree format, merely providing for the recording of messages by the caller and the reception of prerecorded messages by that caller, and moreover do not provide a caller selectable multiple information message capability. Thus, for example, none of the prior art systems known to applicant is a verbally interactive telephone answering system enabling caller selectable routing of an incoming call to a desired receiving telephone in accordance with a verbally interactive prerecorded decision tree format, such as a system in which the caller may pass through a verbally interactive decision tree process before indicating which telephone extension the caller desires to be connected to, with this extension being automatically rung due to a prerecorded arming signal, or with the call being automatically forwarded due to prerecorded dialing codes located on the verbally interacitve multitrack tape. In addition, although conventional telephone answering machines enable the owner to listen to the incoming message as it is being recorded, there are no such systems known to applicant which enable call screening in a variable decision tree format such as utilized in the present invention. Moreover, although two-way communication systems have become popular for purposes of polling or interrogation, such as the cable TV system known as QUBE, these prior art systems are not individualized verbally interactive systems nor do they enable caller selectable routing of incoming calls in accordance with a verbally interactive prerecorded decision tree format. Moreover, although message routing networks are well known, such as for example, the systems disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,458,180; 1,556,727; 1,569,727; 2,430,205; 3,300,771; and 3,686,630, these systems do not employ a telephone answering apparatus having the capabilities of the present invention for controlling interactive communication.
These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention.